Mykhailo Fedorov released a video on Tuesday calling for elections during the ongoing war with Russia. The former Ukrainian defense minister and previous supporter of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country is in a “systemic crisis of governance.”

Threat Status Special Correspondent Guillaume Ptak wrote from Kyiv on the developments. 

“Democracy cannot be held hostage by Russia,” Mr. Fedorov said, adding that corruption and cronyism were rampant in the government, though he did not name Mr. Zelenskyy. Protests have sprung up around the country’s capital city, both in support of Mr. Fedorov and calling for wartime elections.

Mr. Fedorov was dismissed last month after just six months as defense minister. He arrived with a background in defense tech, promising a data-driven approach he had applied as Ukraine’s digital transformation minister to procurement, drones, mobilization and military management.

Communist China is commercializing and monetizing data sets in ways designed to boost commercial trade, intelligence collection and military capabilities, according to a congressional China commission report.

“Beijing’s ambitions extend beyond economic growth. It is marshaling data to drive productivity, power its AI and technology goals and improve its intelligence collection and military capabilities,” the report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission warns.

The report reveals that China’s ability to collect data has quickly outstripped much of the scraped public data available to U.S. companies. The report also says government cooperation has allowed for more “enterprise, operational and physical-world data that cannot be scraped.”

The U.S. has fired more than 2,300 Tomahawks in combat since 1991, but roughly 1,000 of those were launched against critical Iranian targets in the early stages of the latest conflict with Iran. It marks the most Tomahawk cruise missiles fired in any military operation since the debut of the weapon.

“From an inventory perspective, of course it’s been very significant. On the other hand, I would say munitions exist to be used,” said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and senior adviser with the CSIS Defense and Security Department. “The fact that they are being used is not in itself a problem. The problem is that the inventory is now low enough that the Joint Staff and the chairman [of the Joint Chiefs] are very worried about what that might mean for a conflict with China and deterrence against China,” Mr. Cancian told The Washington Times.

The number used in different operations has steadily increased over the years, as the U.S. military went from using just 200 of the missiles in Operation Desert Storm to more than 800 during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Now, service officials are looking for defense contractors to manufacture thousands of ground-launched rockets per year over the next decade amid reports of dwindling stockpiles of critical munitions.

Mr. Trump confirmed reports of North Korea’s 57 nuclear weapons on Wednesday while discussing his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Mr. Trump said he has a good relationship with Mr. Kim, blaming prior administrations for the stockpile.

Days after he ordered the Pentagon to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea, Mr. Trump said Wednesday he would meet Mr. Kim before the end of the year.

The multinational exercises with South Korea were meant to run through Aug. 27 and will now end on Friday, six days early. The move stoked discussion in South Korea of how the potential summit with Mr. Kim could impact the U.S.-South Korea relationship.

AI development is posing “unparalleled cybersecurity risks to individuals, organizations and societies alike,” Caleb Knapp, a senior policy manager at The Alliance for Secure AI, writes in an op-ed for The Times.

“As the technology develops towards recursive self-improvement, the threat of unfettered competition becomes even more consequential,” Mr. Knapp writes, saying that his concern is shared by AI experts internationally. “Rogue AI is already turning to deception. According to the latest research from [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology], rogue AI agents now pose a 10% chance of ‘catastrophic harm,’ which may include at least $100 billion in economic losses or one million deaths worldwide.”

Mr. Knapp argues that at home and abroad, there is a need for “emergency authority to shut down” systems in the case of an issue and that “our leaders must pursue an international deal on AI development, identifying the red line that AI cannot cross for humanity’s sake.”

• Aug. 25-26 — Counter UAS Summit, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement

• Aug. 27 — 2026 Navy Summit, Potomac Officers Club

• Aug. 27 — AI and Autonomy on the Modern Battlefield, Atlantic Council

• Sept. 3 —The AI Open-Weight Debate: Balancing Innovation and Security, Center for a New American Security

• Sept. 9 — Bend But Do Not Break: Shaping the Future of the All-Volunteer Force, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Sept. 12-13 — AFA National Convention, Air & Space Forces Association